On Fri, 2004-06-04 at 15:21, Daniel B. wrote: > William Ballard wrote: > > > On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 06:36:48PM +0100, Oliver Elphick wrote: > > > ... > >> > >> "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this > > > > > > That's poetical language. > > I don't think so. > > Numbers were said differently in the past. (Remember "four and twenty > blackbirds..."?) > > Also, the French version of 80 is basicly "four-twenties" (just like > four score).
It is poetic though in 'four and twenty blackbirds'. It could also be said as 'a score and four'. The reason GB English and US English are different are that American English uses a lot of words which fell out of use in Britain (Fall for Autumn and Hog are two I can think of easily) and the Americans attempted to rationalise spelling (hence check instead of cheque and color instead of colour and a whole host of others) Then of course American English developed its own idioms and useage patterns independently from those developed in the UK (eg pissed: in the UK it means drunk, in the US it means angry). Then of course there is the wonderful world of dialects which means that I as a londener would have a hard time understanding anything in say the Norfolk dialect. Another example if in London a fag is a cigarette, in Liverpool they'd say 'ciggie' and in other places fag means a homosexual. This is slang though and not an 'official' part of the language. Tristan
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